PHILADELPHIA — A top aide to imprisoned former state Sen. Vincent Fumo will not have to return to prison, where she served nearly a year on fraud and obstruction charges.

Ruth Arnao was ordered to pay nearly $800,000 in restitution to a neighborhood charity she once ran when she was resentenced Wednesday. An appeals court had ordered new sentencings for Fumo and Arnao because the trial judge hadn’t explained why he sentenced them far below federal guidelines.

“If you go away for 100 days or 1,000 days, when you’re there, it’s 1 million days. ... It impacts you,” Arnao, 55, told the judge. “I’m hell-bent, I guess, on trying to help, trying to do the right thing and just move forward.”

Senior U.S. District Judge Ronald Buckwalter declined to send her back to prison. Last week, he added just six months to Fumo’s 55-month sentence.

Prosecutors concluded the pair stole $1.6 million from the South Philadelphia nonprofit and spent it on themselves. They were seeking a 9- to 11-year sentence for Arnao, a long-time aide to the powerful Philadelphia Democrat.

“Arnao did not think that she was serving the citizens of South Philadelphia when she cruised the aisles of Sam’s Club at the New Jersey shore stocking up on thousands of dollars of vacation items for her home, or when obtaining a Jeep for her and her family’s recreational use, or when ... destroying almost all of Citizens Alliance’s electronic records in an effort to thwart the federal investigation,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys John Pease and Bob Zauzmer wrote in a sentencing memo filed this week.

Arnao’s husband, former turnpike commissioner Mitchell Rubin, served six months of house arrest and was ordered to repay $150,000 to the state Senate for obstruction.